Meet Our Faculty

Amber (Alonzo) Saraceno – Owner & Artistic Director

Amberhas been inspiring dancers in the community for over fifteen years. Her kindness, outgoing teaching style, and patience with dancers of all levels have made her one of the most sought-after teachers in the Chicago land area. Amber’s versatility and ability to teach all ages and styles is a true testament to her natural gift of teaching. In 2009, Amber founded Expression Dance Studio in Westmont, IL and is the proud director of the Expression Dance Company. Her outstanding work and choreography has been awarded at numerous competitions on the regional and national level. She continues to share her passion for tap dancing with her students and enjoys inspiring them to share her love for this style of dance. In 2017 Amber was excited to join the Special Olympics of Illinois by becoming a certified training site for Rhythmic Gymnastics. She also helped create the ground break, first ever Unified Rhythmic Gymnastics performance team. They recently performed on Soldier Field during the 50th Anniversary of Special Olympics. Her goal is to share love and happiness through dance in an inclusive environment at her studio. Amber feels very fortunate for having the privilege to live her dream and encourage dancers to express themselves through the arts.

Michelle Balsamo – Hip Hop & Jazz

Michelle Balsamobegan dancing at three years old. She danced competitively until the age of eighteen and studied ballet, jazz, lyrical, tap, hip-hop and contemporary. From the age of eighteen and on she has been teaching and choreographing pieces for competitive dancers. Her work has been awarded many 1st places at national competitions, as well as choreography awards. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2017 with a Bachelors of Art in dance. She studied modern techniques, ballet, West African, jazz, hip-hop and improvisation under the Columbia faculty. Through Columbia’s Repertoire Performance Workshop Michelle had the opportunity to work with and perform the choreography of Carrie Hanson, Thomas DeFrantz, and Vershawn Ward. She has also performed the works of Gil Mata, Cameron Mathe, Alvin Ramirez, Matt Pilalis, Julian Carmolinga, and Dionna Pridgeon at the Carnival Choreographer’s Ball in Chicago. She hopes to continue training, teaching, and performing in all different styles and work with new artists and students in the future.

Michele Broviak – Tap

Michele Broviak has an extensive professional and teaching career. She founded Gotta Dance Studio in 1987, along with the Starlite Dancers competitive dance team, instructing and choreographing all forms of dance. Michele’s unique training skills include dancers from ages 2 through adult for the past 37 years. She is committed to making dance a fun yet disciplined sport while providing a rewarding experience for all.

Her choreography has won the title of “World Dance Champions” for four consecutive years. She has received several Entertainment, Choreography and Top Teacher Awards from various dance organizations and competitions, choreographed over 50 shows as well as hundreds of original award-winning competition routines for her students and other competitive studios across the US. She has also has established herself as an adjudicator for Showbiz, Starpower, Starquest, Nexstar, Revolution, Stage One, and Dance Masters of America.

Michele’s intense training has been in ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary, lyrical, hip hop, musical theater, and ballroom. She has had an extensive stage and film career, performing in shows such as “Guys and Dolls”, “Bye Bye Birdie”, “They’re Playing Our Song”, “A Chorus Line.” Michele has also worked with film stars such as Jessica Lange, Chris O’Donnell, Joan Cusack, and Patrick Swayze.

She recently added to her choreography credits “Chicago”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Violet,” You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown,” “Singing in the Rain,” “Grease,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Cats”, and Hairspray.”
Dancers she has trained are currently performing in professional shows, dancing on cruise ships, performing with various musical artists including Lady Gaga, Cher, working in Disney, appearing on television, in commercials, and many more have become dance instructors and studio owners.

Autumn (Broviak) Douglas – Jazz & Technique

Autumnbegan her training at Gotta Dance Studio in Addison, Illinois and was a member of the Starlite Dance Company for 12 years. She also has trained and competed with Midwest Movement, under the direction of Ted Jackson, and Xtreme Dance Force, under the direction of Sam Renzetti. As a competitor, she has won over 20 overall first place high score awards at Regional and National levels. She has also won numerous titles for her award-winning solo performance such as Miss Starpower, Miss Starquest, Distinguished Peformer, and Dancer of the Year. As a choreographer her awards just keep coming with Most Entertaining, Top Choreography Awards, Costume Awards, and First Place overalls Autumn’s training, in jazz, tap, contemporary, lyrical, ballet, pointe, hip hop and musical theater, has been with instructors such as Mia Michaels, Brian Friedman, Ray Leeper, Matt Cady, Dee Caspary, Tabatha and Napoleon, Travis Wall, Sonya Tayeh, Tokyo, and Justin Giles just to name a few. In addition, Autumn is a professional model which includes print and runway work. She has been seen various commercials such as McDonalds and her face has been seen in numerous ads across the nation. Autumn is currently working for ZZAZZ Productions where she has the title of Dancer/Model. Not only does she model the latest fashions and trends but she also dances her way through fashion down the runway. Autumn has also done similar work for the John Paul Mitchell hair shows. You can also see Autumn as a principle dancer in Grammy Nominee Steve Aoki’s first music video titled Ooh featuring Rob Roy.

Luke Douglas – Hip Hop & Choreography

Luke Douglas is a hip hop master who competed and performed with Xtreme Dance Force, America’s Best Dance Crew Finalist, since 2007. His accomplishments include opening act for Soulja boy 2008, opening act at the Flamingo in Las Vegas 2008, performance at Miss Illinois Pageant 2009 and 2010, and years of competing regionally and nationally. He continues to perform professionally as well as instructing at competitive studios. His Awards include over 100 top scoring performances and 3 time “World Victory Cup Dance Champion”. Luke was selected by master choreographers to tour nationally with “Dance Caravan,” training dancers across the United States. He won the title of “Solo Free Style Dance Champion 2009” in Chicago. Luke’s background includes strong technical training in hip hop, jazz, and ballet with world renowned instructors as Samuel Renzetti, Blake McGrath, Matt Caddy, Jesse Santos, Brian Freidman, Lori Ann Gibson, Tokyo, and Mia Michaels just to name a few. He has also trained in many different styles of ballroom. His choreography is cutting edge and fresh making his competitive routines receive top honors including entertainment and choreography awards. Luke’s classes are full of high energy yet disciplined.

Jana Fix – Office Manager

Janagraduated from Miami University (OH) with a degree in Business/Economics and had a career in IT Consulting and Project Management before leaving the workforce to raise her 3 daughters. She has been involved with EDS as a parent since it opened in 2009 – her middle daughter, Ella, was one of the founding members of Expression Dance Company at age 6 – and her youngest daughter, Abby, took the very first Express Start class on the first day the studio opened. Jana became involved as an employee in 2010, taking over all of the studio billing and company administration and her role has grown from there. Her daughters are now teenagers but are still actively involved in Expression Dance Company. You can find Jana at the front desk during the daytime classes, at all the recitals and competitions supporting her girls, and even on stage at recital with her Adult Tap class! She is thankful to Miss Amber for this amazing studio that her children have grown up in and for the chance to be so involved. EDS really is “Where Family and Dance go Hand in Hand”!

Maggie Fox – Ballet, Jazz, Lyrical & Yoga Stretch

Maggiestarted dancing at the age of 4. She strictly studied ballet for 7 years. Three of those years she spent performing with the Chicago Festival Ballet in their annual Nutcracker and Cinderella performances before she found her love for contemporary dance. Since then, she has continued her ballet and contemporary training and has additionally trained in jazz, lyrical, character, and musical theater. In 2016, Maggie had the chance to perform in Chicago multiple times with The Kate Jablonski Statement. The same year, Maggie was accepted into the SoulEscape Company Intensive during which she trained under Justin Giles for 5 weeks and had the opportunity to be a mentor during the SoulEscape Summer Event. In 2017 she had the opportunity to come back for the Company Intensive and perform as a company member in “Immersion” featuring Justin Giles’ original work “11, A MILLION” as well as a contributing work choreographed by Alan Salazar. In addition to dance, Maggie found her love for yoga and has completed her power yoga intensive training through CorePower Yoga in December of 2014. She currently teaches at the suburban Chicago CPY studios and has completed her 200 hour RYT training with NEXT yoga.

Anna Fox – Ballet, Jazz, Lyrical & Yoga Stretch

Annastarted dancing at the age of 4. She studied ballet under the direction of Kenneth Von Heidecke for 7 years; 3 of which she performed with the Chicago Festival Ballet in their yearly Nutcracker and Cinderella performances. During this same time Anna competed for the Elite Rhythmic Gymnastics team where she traveled in the Midwest and won numerous first place medals. Deciding to solely focus on dance, she studied under Sherry Moray (The Academy of Dance Arts) and then under Zhanna Dubrovskaya and Sergey Kozadayev (Salt Creek Ballet). It was there Anna was exposed to dance styles such as character, musical theater, and her true love, contemporary dance. Pursuing her true love, Anna has had the opportunity to work with teachers and choreographers such as Michelle Broviak, Sarah Burney, Caroline Lewis-Jones, Brooke Pierotti, Chris Jacobsen, Dionna Pridgeon, Kate Jablonski, Jaci Royal, Kathryn McCormick, Jen Orsorio Pendleton, Will Johnston, Alan Salazar and Justin Giles. In the summer of 2016, Anna was accepted into Justin Giles’ SoulEscape Company Intensive where she had the opportunity to train with the company. In 2017 she was accepted to the same intensive and is now a company member with SoulEscape. Outside of dance, Anna went through CorePower Yoga’s intensive Power Teacher Training in December of 2014 and NEXT Yoga’s 200 hr. Power Teacher Training in November 2015. She now teaches weekly at CorePower Yoga.

Brianne Krause is originally from a suburb of Chicago, IL where she had been teaching dance for over 20 years. She started out her dance career by taking ballet at the age of three. Throughout her dancing years she took ballet, tap, jazz, modern, character, pointe, and Pilates. Brianne was in various local companies in the Chicagoland area and at a variety of studios some of which include: Midwest Ballet Academy, Salt Creek Ballet, and Champaign-Urbana Ballet. Although her degree is in Psychology from the University of Illinois, she took various classes in dance and performance opportunities whenever she could. Brianne loved taking Pilates during one of her summer intensives so she decided to get certified so she could teach that as well. She loves to pass on her knowledge and watch her students learn as they master new steps and grow into young dancers themselves.

Kristyn Lyerly – Tap

Kristyn’s love of dance began at age 2 and hasn’t stopped since! Kristyn has been trained in tap, jazz, hip hop, lyrical musical theatre, ballet and contemporary. While in high school, Kristyn had the opportunity to perform and compete regionally and nationally, winning state titles, spots on all-star and national dance teams and 2 silver medals at the Junior Olympics. Kristyn continued to dance and pursued her love of teaching in college. Kristyn attended the University of Illinois, graduated with a B.A. in History, and was a member of the Illinette Dance Team and 3Spot Dance Troupe. She received her teaching certificate in secondary education from North Central College and was a member of the Cardette Dance Team. With over 15 years experience teaching dance and choreographing for studios, musical theatre productions and high school and collegiate dance teams, Kristyn’s choreography has won numerous overall high scores and specialty awards in multiple styles of dance. Kristyn is beyond excited to be a part of the EDS family and is looking forward to working with such talented teachers and students! Kristyn will bring her versatile background, positive energy and enthusiasm to every class, and hopes to inspire dancers to grow, flourish and exude confidence as artists and people!

Angela Savaglio grew up in Addison, Illinois and began her technical dance training at the age of three. She started at Gotta Dance Studio working intensely with Michele Broviak and Rhonda Lofendo. Angela is trained in ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, tap and hip-hop. She has traveled both regionally and nationally, receiving five Starpower Victory Cups from 2007-2011 with Xtreme Dance Force. Her expertise in dance has allowed her to work with many choreographers such as Jesse Lee Santos, Brooke Pierotti, Chris Jacobsen, Marinda Davis, Melody Lacayanga, TOKYO, Bryan Tanaka, David Moore, NappyTabs, Laura Edwards and many more top LA choreographers. Angela was also a dancer on a professional contemporary dance company, for two years in Chicago. Angela has choreographed and directed for award winning studios such as Xtreme Dance Force, Dance Xplosion and The Dynasty. She has traveled throughout the United States choreographing for other national award winning dance companies. Her unique style of has won numerous awards such as choreography and entertainment awards along with two National Victory Cups. Angela enjoys sharing her vast knowledge with young dancers who share her same passion for dance.

About Us

Expression Dance Studio’s goal is to provide students with a safe environment in which they can express themselves through movement. All dancers will learn the correct technique in a fun and enjoyable way.